“All Carolyn’s doin’, I promise. I still can’t cook a lick.”
“Too bad she didn’t teach you to man the stove in the first year of marriage like Rory’s threatening to do with me.” Dalton offered his hand. “Take care of yourself.”
“I will. Safe travels back to Montana. Tell that pretty bride of yours hello.”
After Dalton left, Carson slipped on his sterile gear. His mind drifted between the here and now and the past he’d been lost in the past day and a half.
Finally, he was here with her. Where he was supposed to be.
Inside her room, he rolled the chair next to her bed and ran his gloved fingers down her forearm, threading his fingers through hers. He rested his forehead on the metal side rail. Between the hissing of the respiratory machine and the other noises, he figured this angle was the best for her to hear him. He had to speak loud, since the faceguard he was required to wear covered his mouth, protecting her against airborne germs.
“Hey, sugar. I’m sittin’ here beside you. I know you can hear me. I need you to hear me. Come back to me. I need you to know that I’m right here, I ain’t goin’ anywhere.
“It’s quiet out where I am in the waitin’ room. There’s really not a whole lot for me to do except sit around and think. Dangerous, right? I don’t care if everyone thinks I’m an old fool for talkin’ to you like this, because I know you can hear me. I know it. I feel you—my Carolyn—stirring inside there. I can’t explain it any better than that and I don’t even bother tellin’ the nurses or doctors, lest they believe me to be a crazy old coot and kick me outta here.”
He cleared his throat. “I’ve been thinkin’ about our courtship, but as fast as things went between us, we shoulda called it a rocket ship.” He paused because he knew she was laughing inside at his lame joke. “Anyway, Dalton just dropped by and said to tell you that him’n Rory are holdin’ you in their thoughts. I’ll admit I was surprised to see him.” He let his thumb sweep over her knuckles. “Guess they had a nice honeymoon. Wish I’da taken you someplace fancy. So I’ll make you a deal; when you come outta this, I’ll take you anywhere in the world you wanna go for our fiftieth, okay?”
He paused. Forcing himself to slow down.
“So Dalton was tellin’ me his house remodel project is a big job. He kinda hinted around that him’n Rory have had some cross words about that. I’m afraid I laughed at him when he said now that they’re officially married things will go right as rain between them. I couldn’t help but remember that first year we were married… It’s a miracle we stayed married. Yeah, I know it wasn’t all bad. It made us stronger as a couple goin’ forward, that’s for damn sure. Makes me cringe to think you couldn’t even buy your own birthday shot that year. Christ. I cannot believe you were only nineteen. You looked that young, but sugar, you never acted that young. Especially with what you had to deal with growing up.”
The door to the room opened. “Mr. McKay? Time’s up.”
He acknowledged the nurse with a wave.
“Come back to me. I’m right here. Where I’ve always been, where I’ll always be. I love you. Please. Come back to me.”
Carolyn felt as if she was suspended in a box. Trapped inside the four walls, aimlessly floating up, sinking to the bottom or floundering in the middle. Every once in a while she’d get a sharp pain in her head from being too close to the top. She’d reach up and push herself down and the pain would fade.
A spike lanced her brain. Before she moved, she heard it.
Heard him.
And I don’t care if everyone thinks I’m an old fool for talkin’ to you like I do, because I know you can hear me. I know it. I feel you—my Carolyn—stirring inside there.
She pounded her fists on the ceiling, yelling, I’m here! Right here! I can hear you! Don’t go! Stay here with me!
But the louder she yelled, the fainter his anguished voice became so she went motionless again.
I couldn’t help but remember that first year we were married…
She listened to the cadence of his voice, needing it to tether her. But she found herself spinning headlong into that memory even as she tried to reach out to hold onto him for a little while longer…
They’d been married three glorious weeks.
Carolyn had never been happier. Carson left early in the morning, came home for lunch, and did mysterious “ranch stuff” until supper, or he’d knock off mid-afternoon. He never mentioned if the tension and anger between him and his father had been patched up. Occasionally he’d mention a dumb thing that one of his brothers had done, or more accurately what they’d left undone. He came down hard on Casper and seemed to forgive Charlie because of his age. Even though Carson and Cal were twins, Cal deferred to his older-by-just-a-few-minutes brother.
Although there were only six weeks until the end of summer, Carolyn convinced Carson to till up a section of dirt behind the trailer. He brought her a truck bed full of good black dirt to mix in with the red clay soil and fenced the area off.
She’d planted peas, beans, lettuce, radishes and other vegetables with shorter growing times. She drove to see her mother twice a week and checked on that garden because her brothers had no interest in maintaining it. In her mind that meant half the yield of whatever she grew and canned belonged to her.
Since it was her birthday, Carson insisted on celebrating by taking her out. After supper they headed to the dancehall to meet Cal, Charlie, Casper, the McKay’s neighbor Jerry Jenkins and his girlfriend Brenda, Beverly and Mike, who were officially engaged, and her brother Thomas and two of his friends.
Booze flowed freely and as the birthday girl she nursed a beer just to keep people from nagging her about not drinking. Carolyn chatted with Beverly about her upcoming wedding and her excitement at being a military wife. When she looked up she noticed Carson had disappeared.
At the half an hour mark when Carson hadn’t returned, when her brother Thomas asked her to dance she said, “Sure.”
Out on the dance floor, she knew Thomas had something on his mind. “What’s going on?”
“Remember that stuff we talked about the first night you met McKay?”
“About me moving to Denver with you or to Chicago with my friend Cathy?”
“Yeah. I told Dad tonight that I’m going to Denver and I gave the mine my two-week notice.”